State of The Democratic Day Dream

On Tuesday night, President Obama did what he does best: he gave a speech. The man is a master orator, who has the ability to take credit for things he had nothing to do with, and shift the blame for his own wrongdoings onto others.

Take for example his ringing endorsement of economic improvements. GDP is up, and unemployment is down, among other things. For the last four years, all we have been hearing about is GOP “obstruction”. Now, after four years of him supposedly not being able to do anything because of those mean Republicans, he takes credit for good economic circumstances. If Republicans have been “obstructing” him and his agenda this whole time, what exactly did President Obama do to make the economy improve?

In other words, when things are bad the Republicans are stopping him from helping us, but when things are good, you can thank his policies for everything.

Short of major bargains, his call for more economic redistribution in the form of “free” community college (among a whole set of “free” goodies) will fall on deaf ears in the newly Republican Congress. The GOP understands that the Federal government has already become one large transfer payment clearing house. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the plethora of other redistribution programs like SNAP, WIC, unemployment insurance, and so forth, already make up a collective majority of theoverall budget.

If progressives are angry over the ‘inequality’ of this recovery, perhaps they should rally against the Federal Reserve, which has been using quantitative easing measures for years to help the stock and bond markets grow. According to the far leftThinkProgress, the top 1% of Americans own over 50% of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds. That is a key reason (perhaps the reason) why the incomes and net worth of the wealthy have been growing faster than the ‘little guys’, at least these last six years. Ironically, it’s mostly Republicans who opposequantitative easing. President Obama and Congressional Democrats have been bigger supporters of the program than the GOP.